Wednesday, October 26, 2016

Mike Gibbons got the idea for the new sitcom The Great Indoors while working as the
head writer for The Late Late Show with
James Corden. Working “with a bunch
of millennials,” the fortysomething Gibbons soon discovered that in their eyes,
“40 is the new 80.” At one point, as he
attempted to reimburse the show’s writers’ assistant for the group’s lunch
order, “I reached for my wallet, and he recoiled,” Gibbons remembers. “It’s not like I was going to write him a
check – I had cash. And still, he made a
face. Cash – legal tender -- was now
inconvenient? And by the way, just by the
fact that I carry a wallet at all, he assumes I keep pictures of my grandkids
in there.”

As his proxy on The
Great Indoors, Gibbons recruited former Community
star Joel McHale, who responded to the pilot script’s generational
warfare. “I’m a big fan of workplace
sitcoms, and always wanted to do one with a live audience,” McHale avows. “When this great cast came together, I knew
this would work.” McHale plays grizzled adventure
reporter Jack Gordon, called in from the field and now stuck at a desk amid Outdoor Limits magazine’s decidedly
indoorsy staff of tech-addicted twentysomethings: deadpan social media expert
Emma (Christine Ko), hipster-lumberjack Mason (Shaun Brown) and sensitive nerd
Clark (Christopher Mintz-Plasse). And if that weren’t enough to provide Jack
constant conflict, he now finds himself reporting to a new boss – and his old
flame – Brooke (Susannah Fielding) and Brooke’s dad, the publication’s larger-than-life
founder Roland, played by the venerable British actor/comedian Stephen Fry.

As Chris Williams, whose character Eddie is both Jack’s favorite
bartender and his sole peer and confidant, notes, the show is about “bridging
the gap between older and younger, and finding a way to understand each
other. As my character and Joel’s are
finding out, our age is old school now – although I like being old
school.” His young co-star Brown agrees,
calling The Great Indoors “very
relevant, tapping into the sense of guilt [the younger set has] about missing
connections with people, and being so buried in our phones and social media
that we miss what’s happening around us.”

As Gibbons is quick to point out, The Great Indoors “is not just picking on millennials – who won’t
mind anyway, because according to them, they don’t watch TV.” Besides, he adds, with technology uniting us
all, both he and Jack are actually “much closer to the millennials than we care
to admit. I’m addicted to my phone. I’m constantly binge-watching shows
digitally. Quite honestly, too often I’m
thinking I’m the center of the universe.
All of that, we all share. I
think the audience overall will relate, because in the end we all have those
‘millennial’ qualities.”

In television, Jim co-created an original animated pilot for the Disney Channel, and contributed comic material to four annual Oscar-themed comedy specials airing on Comedy Central, hosted by his husband, Frank DeCaro of The Daily Show With Jon Stewart. In 2010, Jim and Frank's comedic music video with Fredrick Ford, "Betty White Lines" went viral, and was featured on The Today Show and CNN's Showbiz Tonight.

Jim has written for entertainment media since his days as the Film Editor for The Daily Pennsylvanian, the college newspaper at the University of Pennsylvania, where he graduated with a degree in marketing from the Wharton School of Business. Originally from Wayne, New Jersey, he now lives in Los Angeles with Frank and their mischievous Boston terrier, Gabby.